Sara Paretsky - Blacklist

When the emergency crew arrived, I was still holding his matchbook and pencil. I stuck them into my own jacket pocket so I wouldn’t be caught in the act of stripping the body.

Besides a fire department ambulance, the dispatcher had sent both the New Solway cops and the DuPage County sheriff’s police. The body had turned up in unincorporated New Solway. That technically meant it belonged to the DuPage County sheriff, but the dispatcher had also notified the New Solway police. Even in my frozen state, I could understand why. The houses along Coverdale Lane were a who’s who of greater Chicago Big Money: New Solway cops would want an inside track on who to blame if the local barons-or baronesses-got testy.

The two groups jockeyed for dominance in inspecting the body. They wanted to know who I was and what I was doing there. Through my

chattering teeth I told them my name, but said I couldn’t talk until I was some place warm.

The two forces bickered for another long minute while I shivered uncontrollably, then compromised by letting the New Solway police ride along while the sheriff’s deputies took me to Wheaton.

“My God, you stink,” the sheriff’s deputy said when I climbed into his squad car.

“That’s just the rotting vegetation,” I muttered. “I’m clean inside.”

He wanted to open the windows to air out the smell, but I told him if I ended up with pneumonia I’d see he footed the medical bills. “You have a blanket or an old jacket or something in the trunk?” I added. “I’m wet and freezing and your pals waiting for the shift change so they wouldn’t have to take the call didn’t help any: it’s been over forty minutes since I phoned.”

“Yeah, bastards,” he said, then cut off the rest of the sentence, annoyed with me for voicing his grievance. He stomped around to the trunk and fished out an old towel. It couldn’t be any dirtier than I was: I draped it around my head and was asleep before the car left the yard.

When we got to the sheriff’s headquarters in Wheaton, I was so far gone I didn’t wake up until some strong young deputy yanked me out of the backseat and braced me on my feet. I stumbled into the building, joints stiff in my clammy clothes.

“Wake up, Sleeping Beauty,” the deputy snapped. “You need to tell us what you were doing on private property out here.”

“Not until I’m clean and dry,” I mumbled through cracked and swollen lips. “You must have some clothes out here I can borrow”

The deputy who’d brought me in said that was highly irregular, they didn’t treat housebreakers like hotel guests in DuPage County. I sat on a bench and began undoing the zipper on my windbreaker. A chunk of some dead plant had worked its way around the pull. My fingers were thick with cold, and I worked slowly while the deputy stood over me wanting to know what in hell I thought I was doing. The zipper took all my attention. When I finally had the jacket undone, I pulled off the wet sweater underneath. I was starting to take off my bottom layer, a T-shirt, when he grabbed my shoulder and yanked me back to my feet.

“What are you doing?”

“What it looks like. Taking off my wet clothes.”

“You can’t do that out here. You produce some ID and some reason for being on private property in the middle of the night.”

By now, a number of other officers, including a couple of women, had joined him. I looked past him and said to them, “Darraugh Graham asked me to check on Larchmont Hall. You know, the old Drummond estate where his mother lived until the year before last. It’s been standing empty and she thought she was seeing housebreakers. I found a dead man in the pool behind the house and got thoroughly soaked pulling him out. And that’s all I can say until I get clean and dry.”

“And how you planning on proving that story?” my deputy sneered. One of the women gave him a sour look. “Be your age, Barney. You never heard of Darraugh Graham? Come along,” she added to me.

My eyes were swelling with the onset of a head cold. I squinted at her badge. S. Protheroe.

Protheroe led me to the women’s locker room, where I toweled myself dry. She even dug up an old set of uniform trousers and a sweatshirt, a size or two too big on me but clean. “We keep spares out here for officers who’ve been through the wringer. You can sign for ‘em on your way out and get ‘em back to us in the next week. You want to tell me your name and what you were really doing out here?”

I pulled on clean socks and looked with disgust at my shoes. The tiled floor was cold, but my shoes would have been worse. I sat on the locker room bench and told her my name, my relationship to Darraugh, his mother’s belief that there were intruders in her old home, my fruitless surveillance-and the body I’d stumbled on. I don’t know why I didn’t feed her my young Juliet. Native caution, maybe, or maybe because I like ardent young women. I dug my wallet out of my windbreaker and showed her my PI license, fortunately walled in laminate.

Protheroe handed it back to me without comment, except to say the state’s attorney would want some formal statement about finding the dead man. When she saw me rolling my foul clothes into a bundle, she even found a plastic bag in a supply cupboard.

Protheroe took me to a room on the second floor and called someone on her cell phone. “Lieutenant Schorr will be along in a minute. You do

much work out here? No? Well, I know the Cook County sheriff’s office is a cesspool of Democratic patronage and favors. Out here it’s different. Out here it’s a cesspool of Republican patronage. So don’t mind the boys, they’re not all real well trained.”

Lieutenant Schorr arrived with a couple of male sidekicks and a woman who announced she was Vanna Landau, the assistant state’s attorney. One of the New Solway police officers had stayed for the meeting, as well. A fifth man came hurrying in a minute later, straightening the knot in his tie. He was introduced as Larry Yosano, a member of the law firm that had handled Larchmont’s sale-apparently a very junior member.

“Thanks, Stephanie,” Schorr dismissed my guide. She gave me a discreet thumbs-up and left.

I was used to Chicago police interrogation rooms, with their scarred tables and peeling paint, and where strong disinfectants don’t quite cover the traces of vomit. Stephanie Protheroe had brought me to something like a modern boardroom, with a television and camcorder ruling over blond furniture. Behind the modern facade, though, the smell of disinfectant and stale fear rose to greet me like an unwelcome neighbor.

Vanna Landau, the ASA, was a small woman who leaned across the table as if trying to make herself bigger by taking up as much room as possible. “Now just what were you doing on the land?”

In between coughs and sneezes, I explained in as mild a voice as I could summon.

“Spying on Larchmont Hall in the middle of the night?” Landau said. “That is trespassing, at a minimum.,,

I pinched the skin between my eyebrows in an effort to stay awake. “Would it have been better if I’d done it in daylight? Geraldine Graham was worried when she saw intruders around the house late at night. At her son’s request, I went over to take a look.”

Larry Yosano, the young lawyer, was trying to rub sleep out of his own eyes. “Technically, of course, it’s trespass, but if you’ve ever dealt with Mrs. Graham, you’d know that she’s never really acknowledged that she no longer owns Larchmont. She’s a strong personality, difficult to say no to.”

He turned to me. “Lyons Trust is the titleholder. They’re ‘he ones you should call if Mrs. Graham sees a problem with the property.”

I didn’t say anything except to ask for a Kleenex. One of the deputies found some paper napkins in a drawer and tossed them across the table at me. “Or the police,” Lieutenant Schorr said. “Did that ever occur to you, Ms. Private Eye?”